My Personal Experience: My Experience With Disabilities

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My first experience with a person with a disability was my nephew, Ethan. He has Autism and was diagnosed around the age of two. When I think back to what I first noticed about him was that he never spoke and he never wanted to make eye contact with you. My mom and sister were the ones who mentioned to my brother and his wife that something seemed off about their son. Of course, my brother was in denial saying he was just taking longer to develop but my mom was persistent and made him get Ethan tested. She was a nurse and had four kids of her own. She knew based on her profession that he wasn’t behaving like a normal two year old. I wasn’t in teaching at the time so I had no idea about the variety of disabilities that were out there. …show more content…

One that comes to mind was my annual sleep over. I have a total of five nieces and nephews plus my own two children. I used to take all of them except for Ethan for a week in the summer. I didn’t include him because I was afraid of how he was going to act. I didn’t know how to handle him when he would have outburst. Looking back I wish I would have included him more. However, I didn’t have the experience with children that I now have. Now, I understand more about his disability which as I reflect would have changed the way I looked at him. His disability excluded him from a lot of fun activities not only with me but with other people as well. I think the stereotype that I reinforced was because he had a disability he wasn’t normal. I understand now that his outbursts were his way of trying to communicate with people. It must have been so frustrating for him. What I do know about him is that he is a genius when it comes to video games. When I see him around the holidays or his birthday he often gives me a list of games he would like for me to buy for his X-box or Play Station. I am amazed that he plays them because I don’t have the kind of stamina required to focus on a video game for a sustained period of time. However, he plays them until he completes the entire

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